Dubai e-government’s smart city roadmap: Popular participation and voluntary location information

Abstract

This paper assesses Dubai’s spatial & location-based online client services, access to public participation and provision of voluntary geographic information. Geographic Information Systems and Location Based Services are crucial components of Electronic Governance and Smart Cities as they represent dependent variables within complex Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), not limited to government. Public participation in decision making for urban system is axiomatic with or without digital technologies and to mitigate this challenge the federal government of UAE outlined a policy and provision guidelines for use of public participation technologies. This paper concludes by re-emphasising Dubai’s strengths and weaknesses caused by implementation of the smart city model.